Living On Hope
by homemadedonuts
Summary: Joel and Ellie make a life in the Jackson County community despite the lies Joel refuses to tell her. A stranger arrives and threatens to expose the truth of his lies, and bring his world crumbling down around him. Can Joel really experience happiness in this monstrous world?


There was a sound in his head, a buzzing that he couldn't explain. The room was quiet and the first rays of sunlight began streaming through the curtains and like clockwork Joel suddenly opened his eyes. Even after all of these years he could still hear the buzzing of his alarm signaling five a.m. What had changed about this little ritual was he no longer got up and started for the door, walking into an unfamiliar hallway and into the nightmare they had lived in for twenty years. Joel turned, his mattress creaking under his weight and his gaze met a framed picture from his past. Sarah smiled at him from behind the glass, forever frozen in time with her trophy raised high in her hand and a much younger version of himself smiling. "Goodmornin' baby." Joel said, his voice cracking slightly from its first morning use. He stared at this photo of his daughter and himself for only a moment before he stood up. No matter the things he had been through and the person he had become throughout these last years, the pain of her less never got any easier. He was grateful for the photo, but sometimes waking up to it staring him in the face wasn't the way he wanted to start a new day. He left it where it was, Ellie had been so proud of herself when she'd scored the silver frame and placed it there to surprise him and she had become nearly as important as Sarah herself to him. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her feelings.

The room was a little chilly, and he cursed a little as his feet touched the cold wooden floor. He longed for a rug of some sort, and sure there were plenty of rugs in the ruined houses around the area. But was it that important that he risk himself to go and score a tattered rug? He'd deal with the cold floor, at least for a little while. Maybe sooner or later he would come to worry with the luxuries of the world. The room he was in was as tidy as it could get, there was a bit of peeling wallpaper and a stain down one wall where the roof had begun to leak. When Joel and Ellie had taken residence here, Joel had patched it but the damage was done. At least it wasn't that bad yet, the house itself had withstood the passage of time quite well. When they arrived at the Jackson County community a few months earlier they had stayed with Tommy for a while. After the span of a month Joel had demanded to find a place to call their own. It was no offense to Tommy, but just as the past had previously indicated the two brothers always had a difference of opinion. Before the situation could become too dire, and for the sanity of the two ladies in their life, Joel had scouted the houses just among the barrier that had been set up. They had to expand, and that meant putting the community in danger but it had to be done. When he had come up against the group committee his argument had been that eventually it would have to be done anyway. People were going to expand their families, and sooner or later there would be new survivors that would have to be welcomed into the group or they would be inbreeding and that wasn't good for any sort of future they were trying to build. They needed fresh blood, and new families would need new houses. So, they expanded two city blocks and Joel got his house.

The expansion hadn't been terribly difficult, the biggest danger they had was attracting the infected. Essentially what they had to do was run a new fence around the perimeter they had cleared, and then connect it to the new community and run electricity to it. It had been a pain in the ass to say the least but it had eventually panned out. After they had cleared it and sectioned it off, they had to dispose of any dead that had lain dormant for the amount of years these places had lain empty. It was done after the span of six weeks, and then Joel and Ellie had picked their small three bedroom abode and cleaned it up. He had surprised her with a poster of Savage Starlight and some really crappy band that Sarah had adored. Ellie smiled at him when she saw it, her eyes twinkling with genuine happiness. "Endure and survive." She had said to him and that made them both laugh uncontrollably. Despite truth she knew, and the lies that Joel was trying to hide from her, she had slowly started to become more herself and less the withdrawn girl they had arrived with.

Joel crossed the room and opened the wardrobe that he stored his minimal belongings in. Once they had moved in he'd scrounged up a few outfits and dubbed the clothes he had worn on the way in his work clothes. He pulled on the tattered jeans, and flannel shirt, and soon was lacing his boots. Ellie would be waking soon as well, and heading out to her own job. Once she had decided what she wanted to do, he was surprised that she hadn't wanted to be on the same team as himself. She had branched off to hunting, and she was indeed good at it. Joel however was on perimeter. Jobs that spoke to their strong suits of course. He pulled open his bedroom door and walked down the narrow hallway, passing Ellie's room and the empty spare to the living room. The kitchen was to the right, and he stopped briefly to simply grab a few sticks of venison jerky before grabbing his survival gear. A pair of bows sat propped against the wall and he grabbed his and the quiver that wasn't as full. Ellie needed more arrows than he did and she was definitely a better shot with the bow anyway. The old rifle and pistol were strapped into their holsters, and he finished his gear with the baseball bat that was nearing its last leg.

Work was work, and it was monotonous. But it was dangerous, and that kept him interested at least. When he had been with Tess he had been a smuggler, and if she were alive she would be laughing at him. A functioning member of the community? She'd call him a pansy ass. Sitting on a chair in a tree stand, the sound of the community around him waking up and moving around with their own days beginning, Joel sighed heavily. The October air turned his breath to vapor, and winter would be coming soon. It was going to be the hardest time for them, what with preserving food and trying to stay alive in the winter. The only good thing that winter usually meant was that bandit activity slowed usually. It wasn't nonexistent, but the cold normally prevented enough hurdles for every survivor that venturing out to raid wasn't the highest priority unless hunger was high on the list. Today was slow, like it had been for the last week. That didn't stop him from being as alert as he could, he knew that danger bit you in the ass when you went about getting lazy and that got people kille-…

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted when he spied what looked like a tendril of smoke in the distance. White, that meant that it was a clean burning fire for the moment. He reached for the walkie talkie at his feet and clicked the button. "Got a visual here." Joel said quietly into the microphone. "Smoke, looks small enough to be a campfire. Maybe two miles out." He released the button and was met with Maria's voice. "I'm sending someone to you Joel, meet at the west exit."

Joel sighed one more time before he stood and began grabbing his things. "Endure and survive." He muttered under his breath, and descended the tree stand. It was business as usual.


End file.
